The Cuban-American Pundits Radio Hour

Tonight I'll be broadcasting my brand new Internet radio talk show at 8:00 PM EST. You can listen live, online or you can download a podcast of the show after it airs.

I have asked Professor Antonio de la Cova to join me tonight. de la Cova is a professor of Latin American Studies at Indiana University and the author of the forthcoming book entitled: The Moncada Attack: Birth of the Cuban Revolution.

Because I may be stuck at work until a somewhat late hour I may be forced to do the show from my car (I love technology). That means we won't be able to take calls.

Click this link for more info.

At the time of the show (8:00 PM eastern) a "play" button will apear on the page. Make sure to refresh the page at 8:00 PM to see the button.

Build your bio-bunkers now, folks...

fidel castro's government secretly creating biological weapons? It cant be. The ENCASA people and all those reporters have never, ever even alluded to mentioning anything about no biological agents.

Im Shocked. SHOCKED I TELL YOU!

MIAMI - The former chief of Cuba's military medical services is calling for international weapons inspections of a secret underground lab near Havana, where he says the government is creating biological warfare agents like the plague, botulism and yellow fever.

Roberto Ortega, a former army colonel who ran the military's medical services from 1984 to 1994, defected in 2003 and now lives in South Florida.

After living here quietly for four years, this week Ortega went on the Spanish language media circuit to denounce what he claims is an advanced offensive biological warfare weapons program. He spoke Tuesday night at the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban American Studies where one angry heckler stormed out accusing him of deliberately sowing fear among Cuban exiles.

"They can develop viruses and bacteria and dangerous sicknesses that are currently unknown and difficult to diagnose," Ortega told The Miami Herald. "They don't need missiles or troops. They need four agents, like the people from al-Qaida or the Taliban, who contaminate water, air conditioning or heating systems."

He said Cuba was ready to use the biological agents "to blackmail the United States in case of an international incident" such as the threat of a U.S. invasion.

How long before the fidel castro boot lickers start swearing that Ortega is part and parcel of the extremist, intransingent, right wing cabal that is the Miami Mafia?

Are you hungry?

Some of the livelier and more participatory posts here on Babalu have been those where we've talked about Cuban food.

To wit:

Pan cubano.
Tostada y cafe.
Lechon!
Pan con lechon!
Que quieren comer?
Versailles.
Good Ole Cuban food in the Good Ole South.

Now, every once in a while, I like to rib you all out there that dont live in Miami or New Jersey and dont have access to a local timbiriche or Cuban food restaurant and either post a picture or write about, say, vaca frita, or pastelitos, or arroz con pollo, just to make you all salivate and with envy. To be honest, I cant imagine life without a pan con bistec or frijoles colorados or ajiaco or ropa vieja being just a stone's throw away. Or, better yet, a phone call to Mami's: Mami. Hace tiempo que no haces chicharos.

Imagine, if you will, waking up on a Sunday morning, it's snowing outside and as you start making your typical breakfast - eggs, bacon, a slice of toast or two - you get a massive craving for a pastelito de guayaba to go with your pseudo cafe-con-leche. What do you do? Book a flight to Miami? Call someone down here and have them FedEx you a box of Cuban pastries? Nah. Chances are you will force yourself to live with the craving, at least til you do have a chance to fly down to Little Havana, USA and who knows how long that will be.

But fret not you Cuban-foodless starving folks. I got just the thing to satisfy those whetted comida criolla appetites.

If you live out in the Cuban food boonies and feel like having a couple delicious pastelitos de guayaba, why not just make'em yourself? What? You dont know how?

Well then, let Marta teach you.

Which brings me to the point of this culinary post.

Tomorrow, Thursday March first, we will be unveiling a new feature at Babalu. Our very own Marta of My Big Fat Cuban Family has graciously agreed to be Blogdoms official Cuban Chef. From now on, every other Thursday or so we'll be treated to a tasty Cuban treat from Marta's Cuban-American Kitchen.

Not only will she be posting comida criolla recipes, but she will be letting us all in on those little culinary secrets - like, for example, when you cant, for the life of you, find Bijol anywhere in your state and you need an American substitute ingredient for that arroz con pollo youre making for the in-laws this weekend. Or, like a certain wife I know, when youre scared to use a pressure cooker and simply must have carne con papas for dinner.

Best part about it however, is not only that you all will most assuredly participate with your own recipes and takes on dishes, but that we all get to share the best aspect of Cuban cuisine with each other: family. Because Cuban food is great and all, but it tastes so much better when you share it with loved ones.

Buen provecho.

Dissident Expelled from Bolivia Granted Asylum in Norway

From Human Rights Foundation:

Norway becomes a safe haven for Amauris Samartino after illegal detention

BOGOTÁ, Colombia -- Amauris Samartino, a political dissident illegally expelled from Bolivia for criticizing President Evo Morales and Fidel Castro, has been granted asylum in Norway. Samartino, a medical doctor, was detained at gunpoint in eastern Bolivia last December for remarks he had made in the local media. Prior to his expulsion, the Human Rights Foundation (HRF) adopted him as a prisoner of conscience of the Bolivian government. "Although my home is Bolivia, I am overjoyed that Norway is willing to be a safe harbor for those with the temerity to express themselves freely. Bolivia is no longer a safe place for those who disagree, no matter how peacefully, with the government of Evo Morales," said Samartino.

Samartino, a Cuban national, escaped Cuba in 1998 along with 11 other dissidents on a raft. He was picked up by a ship and taken to Guantánamo Bay, where he remained until the International Organization for Migration arranged asylum for him in Bolivia. Admitted to Bolivia in October of 2000, first as a political refugee and later as a permanent legal resident, he settled in Santa Cruz, where he met his wife. In early 2006, Samartino began publicly criticizing the friendship between recently elected president Evo Morales and Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. On December 23, 2006 he was arrested in Santa Cruz and taken to La Paz. While in Bolivian police custody, he was told he would be returned to Cuba, but after 17 days of detention he was expelled to Colombia. "Remarkably, Samartino has faced the nightmare of political persecution not once, but twice. Fortunately for him, there is a Norway. This man's story underlines the reality that freedom can never be taken for granted and must always be actively defended," said Human Rights Foundation President Thor Halvorssen.

Bolivian cabinet minister, Alicia Muñoz, ordered Samartino's arrest and detention for violating a 1996 immigration law that prohibits foreigners from involving themselves in Bolivian internal affairs. However, that law was declared unconstitutional in 2001 for infringing on free speech rights. On February 2, 2007, the Bolivian Constitutional Tribunal ruled that the detention and expulsion of Samartino was arbitrary and illegal. HRF had filed an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief with the Constitutional Tribunal delineating how the government had violated not only Bolivian law but four international treaties in this case. However, Bolivian Vice President Álvaro García Linera responded that the government would not follow the ruling of the court and that Samartino would not be permitted back in the country. "The behavior of the Morales government illustrates the constitutional crisis in Bolivia today. The government ignores the highest court in the land, violates the separation of powers, and justifies arbitrary detainment and exile," said Halvorssen.

HRF is a New York-based international nonpartisan organization devoted to defending human rights in the Americas. It centers its work on the twin concepts of freedom of self-determination and freedom from tyranny. These ideals include the belief that all human beings have the rights to speak freely, to associate with those of like mind, and to leave and enter their countries. Individuals in a free society must be accorded equal treatment and due process under law, and must have the opportunity to participate in the governments of their countries; HRF's ideals likewise find expression in the conviction that all human beings have the right to be free from arbitrary detainment or exile and from interference and coercion in matters of conscience. HRF's International Council includes former prisoners of conscience Vladimir Bukovsky, Palden Gyatso, Armando Valladares, Ramón J. Velásquez, Elie Wiesel, and Harry Wu.

The article, including contact information, is here.

Feelings...

Nothing more than feeeeelings
Trying to forget my
Feelings of love

Feeeeelings
Wo wo wo
Feeelings.....

Have you ever heard or read such sappy crap?

Get the corsage, hugo, fidel is ready for prom!

H/T Yamy.

Bitchslapping Ana Menendez - UPDATED

Robert takes Ana Menendez out behind the woodshed and gives her a well deserved sopapo or two:

Harmless Spies

It's been a while since I've fisked an Ana Menendez column, so when I read her column this morning, whistles and bells went off.

It's time to dust off the fisking machine.

Ana's reaction to the sentencing of Cuban spies Carlos and Elsa Alvarez is the subject of her column this morning. Apparently, she thinks the Alvarezes were victims of "misguided pride" who were trying to "persuade Cuba and the United States to make nice". The fact that she even tries to justify and/or downplay their acts is shameful, IMHO.

Contained in the dry court documents are all the personal betrayals and self-important skullduggeries that through coups, revolution and exile have remained a constant feature of Cuban political life.

In that context, Carlos' biggest sin was not ''spying'' but pride. Pride that he could game Cuban intelligence. Pride that he could be the agent of change by betraying friends. And pride that his academically informed ''conflict resolution'' skills could penetrate the miasma of cynicism and calculation that has crippled U.S.-Cuba relations this last half-century.

Here's some of the "harmless" personal information the Alvarezes had on their computer and which they shared with a foreign country, an enemy regime:

• FIU president Modesto Maidique's personal finances and private business ventures.

• A ''redacted'' U.S. government study on the "status of telecommunications in Cuba.''

• Brothers to the Rescue leader José Basulto, including that ''an investigation should continue'' into "the ties he has to the CIA, the Cuban American [National] Foundation and financial interests such as Bacardi.''

• A personal contact who had met with Richard Nuccio, then-President Bill Clinton's special advisor for Cuba, who ''was very depressed'' by Cuba's shootdown of two Brothers to the Rescue planes killing three Cuban-American men and a Cuban exile and the subsequent Helms Burton law toughening the U.S. embargo against Cuba.

• Lula Rodriguez, a Miami-Dade Democrat who later became personal assistant to then-Attorney General Janet Reno and eventually deputy assistant secretary of state for public affairs in the Clinton administration.

Here's Ana's justification of these actions:

Whatever combination of personal ambition and hopeless naiveté first led Carlos to open up to Cuban intelligence and then to the FBI, we can never really know. Neither can we know who ultimately served him up to U.S. prosecutors; that information is secret.

But the picture that emerges of Carlos and Elsa is less one of hardened spies than of two highly educated and religious people who assumed everyone shared their lofty ideals. A member of an underground anti-Castro student movement, Carlos eventually fled to America and grew to believe he could persuade Cuba and the United States to make nice.
...
This is not intelligence to make or break a country. This is theater of the cliché. By the time Carlos received a commendation from Cuba in 1991, he should have known he was being played in a game he'd long since lost control of.

Is Ana that naive to think that Cuba would have just stopped at gathering personal information on influential exiles? What do we wait for, leaked information on our ports and nuclear facilities? Do we wait for another Ana Belen Montes to show up?

I know. Ridiculous. But it gets better. Ana saves the best for last.

And then the judge sentenced him to hard time. Carlos thought he could be a one-man foreign policy machine and ended up betraying friends and trusting scumbags. The over-the-top hysteria and paranoia surrounding his slight story now must be giving Fidel sweet solace in his last days.

In the end, Carlos Alvarez's biggest victim was Carlos Alvarez. The bigger tragedy would be if the cause of moderate Cubans goes down with him. One suspects that, for the Cubans at least, that was the goal all along.

It's those insufferable hard-liners once again, causing a ruckus with their "paranoia" about those harmless spies. Of course, Ana asserts that the biggest tragedy isn't the fact that personal information was given to the castros, but that the "cause of moderate Cubans" is going down with the Alvarezes.

Un. Believeable.

Here's a man who was commended by the Cuban regime in 1991 for his invaluable work. If Alvarez is indeed a representation of the moderate Cubans, then we're really in bad shape.

Or Ana Menendez's vision of reality is totally warped. My bet in on the latter. And that's the best I can say about Ana.

UPDATE FROM HENRY:

I just wanted to add to Robert's excellent points. What Ms. Menendez conveniently fails to mention is that the nature of the actual information they gave Cuban intelligence is under seal. The prosecutor's sentencing memorandum only refers superficially to some of the content but for reasons of privacy (of the victims) does not give much more detail. The judge did have access to that information though, and I'm sure that influenced his decision.

Also, keep in mind that the info that got them 6 and 3 years respectively is merely what the FBI was able to recover from the computer after it had been erased. Alvarez was spying for 30 years and his wife was assisting him for at least 25. Who knows what else they did during that time?

And lastly, let's not forget the access these people had to psychological profiles of law enforcement officials in South Florida. Having private information about one's psychological make-up and any pecadillos the person may have committed is an incredible tool for blackmail and for "turning" a person into a compromised person.

If they weren't guilty of a serious crime, why did they plead guilty? If the evidence is on their side they should have fought to clear their name. Nobody elected Carlos Alvarez to be "a one-man foreign policy machine". We have elections to pick the people that represent us and conduct our foreign policy. Whatever his motivations, Alvarez' actions undermined that policy.

A Cubanese Link Fest

La red esta que le ronca el merequetengue hoy....

Los canadienses se estan comiendo tremendo cable.

A la reja! Y, metele mano.

Ay, Ana, tira la piedra y esconde la mano.

Estos si los tienen buen puestos.

De Guatemala a Guatapeor.

Ponte pa tu numero.

Porque me saco un pastaña y te inco. Te inco. Te inco.

Ojo.

castro's shills get theirs

Gary Marx of the Chicago Tribune was a good reporter in Cuba and he was thrown out. So were two other reporters. They wrote of long lines, lousy trains, dissident arrests, rationing, black marketry, castro's doctors fleeing and the sad disillusionment of Cuba's youth. It's the same stuff one can read here on Babalu blog, or on The Real Cuba or on Uncommon Sense, Blog for Cuba and a ton of others.

But the flip side of this expulsion is the continuing prosperity of lousy castro-shill journalists like AP's Anita Snow and al-Reuters' Marxist Marc Frank, (as well as that Vanessa creature at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel) who toe the castro line, telling us the situation there is all fine, assure us raul is making no changes, Cubans are calm, Cuba is full of progress and that recent crop failure was just a case of bad weather. They'll never be thrown out by the castroites because they're just too valuable to the totalitarian regime.

They get what's coming to them in this newspaper editorial asking them why they haven't been thown out as the real journalists have been. One wonders why these remaining idiots are not red-faced about not joining Marx on the outbound flight from Havana.

Read it here.

Dear Editors,

On Friday Night the Houston Chronicle published on its web site (I suppose it was in the paper Saturday morning) an asinine editorial about why the US should shut down its program that extends political asylum to Cuban doctors working on internationalist missions around the world.

I wrote a letter to the editor which was published today. If you click the link, it's the 2nd letter down. They made a small edit which I wish they wouldn't have made but overall the content of the letter was unchanged.

Here's my letter as I sent it with the sentence they changed in italics.

I am dismayed at your recent editorial (Doctor Diplomacy). The United States has always welcomed those Cubans who would attempt to escape the tyrannical rule of Fidel Castro. It shouldn't matter what kind of propagandistic missions they are being compelled to engage in.

The problem is that even if they were to win the U.S. visa lottery, which is the mechanism by which most Cuban immigrants currently come to this country, Cuban doctors are denied exit visas that other Cubans routinely get, albeit after paying a series of fees and bribes to Cuban government officials. In this sense these Cuban doctors are even more restricted than their non-doctor counterparts. The program that provides visas to these doctors is an attempt to counter the regime's policy that that the brains of Cuba's doctors are "the property of the Cuban government".

The doctors that apply for the asylum can not be guaranteed visas because they have to be investigated to ensure they are who they say they are and they have not participated in repressive activities. This seems to be a reasonable caveat to the program.

As far as what "observers throughout the Americas" think about the program, why should Americans care? The United States is one of the few countries that has had courage to denounce the ridiculous rule of Fidel Castro. Those "observers throughout the Americas" have largely applauded Castro in his anti-Americanism and turned a blind eye toward his abuses of the Cuban people.

Henry Louis Gomez

By the way, I submitted another letter to another paper, about the embargo, yesterday. I'll post it here at some point whether it gets printed or not.

The more the merrier.

24 Cubans exile on Key West this morning.

I've got $18,000,000 and I need help. (Updated)

How many of those Nigerian email spams do you get daily? I get at least 50. In fact, if I had a dime for each conspam Ive received in the past four years, I wouldnt need that extra $18,000,000 they have lying around ready to be dispersed. But it get's kinda tiring each day having to delete all that spam.

So what do you do? Well, you do what Steve did. Start responding and then write a book:

PROPOSAL FOR URGENT ASSISTANCE Dear Sir: I must solicit your confidence in this transaction. I am a high placed official with the Department of Finance Affairs in Lagos, Nigeria. I and two other colleagues are in need of a silent foreign partner whose bank account we can use to transfer the sum of $18,000,000. This are monies left by a barrister who died tragically in a plane crash last year...

Sound familiar? Congratulations. You have been selected to become a mugu, an expression African con artists use to describe the targets of their e-mail scams. But they drew a bead on the wrong guy when they started spamming Steve H. Graham. Like many Internet users, Graham eventually got tired of receiving mugu mail and decided to fire back at his wannabe swindlers.

Armed with a scathing sense of humor, Graham quickly turned the tables on his tormenters--with side-splittingly hilarious results. Whether he's referring to his fictional lawyer Biff Wellington, complaining about the injury he received while milking a lactating sloth, or offering the Preparation H helpline as his phone number, Graham--using aliases such as Wile E. Coyote, Barney Rubble, and Herman Munster--offers proof that spamming the spammers is the best revenge.

Steve H. Graham is a retired attorney. Since childhood, he has been fighting for truth, justice, and free movie passes. For each copy sold of this book, he will donate 100 percent of the proceeds to himself. He is also the author of the cookbook Eat What You Want and Die Like a Man. He lives in Miami.

Im told the book will be in stores today, or you can order your copy here.

Ive read quite a few passages and without giving anything away, it's pretty freaken funny.

Congrats to Steveo on his latest literary achievement.

Update:Get your Tivos ready. Looks like Steve's gonna be on Fox News tomorrow morning. I wonder if they'll let me cook a lechon in the parking lot and do a live feed?

Let's talk. War never solved anything.

Since 1979 we've been dealing with these folks. When will we end it once and for all?

New York: Targeted By Tehran? (Newsweek)

March 5, 2007 issue - Increasing tensions between Washington and Tehran have revived New York Police Department concerns that Iranian agents may already have targeted the city for terror attacks. Such attacks could be aimed at bridges and tunnels, Jewish organizations and Wall Street, NYPD briefers told security execs last fall, according to a person with access to the briefing materials who asked for anonymity because of the sensitive subject matter.

NYPD officials have worried about possible Iranian-sponsored attacks since a series of incidents involving officials of the Iranian Mission to the United Nations. In November 2003, Ahmad Safari and Alireaza Safi, described as Iranian Mission "security" personnel, were detained by transit cops when they were seen videotaping subway tracks from Queens to Manhattan at 1:10 in the morning. The men later left New York. "We're concerned that Iranian agents were engaged in reconnaissance that might be used in an attack against New York City at some future date," Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly told NEWSWEEK. A spokesman for the Iranian Mission in New York said he was aware of the allegations but had no immediate comment. —Mark Hosenball

The truth about the castros' Cuba

Oh, the stories political prisoners Rolando Jimenez, José Ferrer and Francisco Diaz could tell.

Descarga!

Our very own Dave Sandoval and his band DelExilio will be in miami this weekend for two performances:

If you were looking for something to brighten up your weekend, there you have it folks. You can listen to a couple of DelExilio's excellent tunes right here.

So get off your keesters this weekend and support Dave and DelExilio. You'll totally be glad you did.

Hey, let's make all nicey nice with raul!

Um, ok. Maybe not:

Cuban political prisoner hospitalized gravely ill as a result of a brutal beating at the Boniato Prison.

SANTIAGO DE CUBA, CUBA- February 26 (Aidee Rodriguez Rodriguez,
Santiago Press/Puenteinfocubamiami.org)-

Fifteen officers at the Boniato prison ganged up to brutally beat the 55 years old Cuban political prisoner Francisco Herodes Diaz Echemendia who is serving a 20 year and 9 months sentence for political reasons in Cause #46 of 1990.

The beating was ordered by Major Iovanny Batista Betancourt who is the prison's director and also by Alain Rivero Montero, Chief of the prison's Interior Order.

The injuries sustained by Diaz Echemendia in such brutal beating were so severe that he was immediately admitted in critical condition at the prison's hospital facility.

Reporting from Santiago de Cuba for the Information Bridge Cuba Miami, Aidee Rodriguez Rodriguez, correspondent of Santiago Press. Given on February 23rd of 2007, with the collaboration of Plantados Hasta La Libertad y la Democracia en Cuba.

A new sign castro's army is restless

Babalu writers were among the first to notice signs of trouble brewing in castro's military.

To recap, castro's army is rife with discontent - Cuban enlisted men recently shot two of their officers near a Santiago prison. It was triggered when a group of enlisted men had made friends with a prisoner who offered to take them to freedom's shores if the soldiers would let him out. The enlisted men went for it, but their officers tried to stop them. In the end, the enlisted men fired at the castroites trying to stop them. It was, quite simply, military mutiny, the kind that proved such fertile ground for Lenin's violent takeover of Russia in 1917. Read it here.

That's one incident that we know of.

Then things got wilder when a Cuban exile group called Commandos F4 recently broadcast their takeover of a whole regiment's worth of weapons from a Cuban army unit. From the comments section in Babalu blog, readers heard this report over the radio, and said that the Commandos F4 said the Cuban army was fed up and more than willing to join forces with potentially a brewing rebellion. See the whole thing here.

Obviously, there are severe signs of trouble in the Cuban army and these are just two of the instances we know about.

Proving the point, though,is today's perfect counterindicator - word from raul castro, fidel's little brother, that all is hunky dory in the Cuban army. Now why would raul say that?

Yes it's a counterindicator, castroites hate the fact that word is getting out about Cuba's growing revolts in the army. Word out about matters like this might encourage even more troops to revolt or look for Commandos F4.

These are very dangerous times for the castroites. If you can stand to open Prensa Latina, the state-controlled castroite propaganda organ, the link with raul praising the Cuba army is interestingly timed, and posted as the top story, here.

Vamos a Selma!

What would happen if I published a book called "Vamos a Selma" and in it, I completely denigrated Martin Luther King and the Civil rights movement, stating falsities like "the South was utopian before the civil rights movement." And showed photographs of African-Americans sitting in the back seats of buses and captioned "In Selma, all African-Americans are guaranteed seats in public transportation." Or showed photographs of African-Americans lined up at a drinking fountain with a sign that reads "blacks only" above it and captioned the photograph "African-Americans even have their own water fountains in Selma!" And yet another photo of African-Americans in the cotton fields captioned "African-Americans share in the robust economic activity of Selma!"

And then, I took said published book and sold it to the School Board and had it shelved in elementary school libraries.

What would happen? How long would that book last on the shelves? Would concerned African-American parents want to have that book removed from their children's schools' shelves? Would the rest of the non-African-American population support them in their quest to have that book removed?

Ive heard arguments stating that libraries are chock full of books that are slanted, one-sided and downright false and that that is no reason to suppress the freedom of expression that libraries offer. That may be so. But does that make it right for me to publish a book like "Vamos a Selma", complete with all the lies and misrepresentations, and have it placed in libraries as a "reference" book?

How many of the same people that have lobbied for the "Vamos a Cuba" book to remain on the shelves in Dade County Public School Libraries, will lobby for "Vamos a Selma" to remain on the shelves as well?

I know the answer. Do you?

Los Sellitos

I hadnt thought about these for years, but Dean just brought back a bunch of memories with a post on S&H Green Stamps.

Do you remember getting anything from the S&H catalog as a kid?

Babalusian Cuba Photo Exhibit

Ana Zangroniz, daughter of ace Babalu cub reporter Julio Zangroniz, sent me the following:

I'll be having my first solo photography exhibition coming up on March 2, featuring my work from Cuba in 2004. Since the Cuban population in the Capital District of New York is slim, I was hoping that you might be able to do a post on Babalu for me, advertising my show and putting a call out to Cubans and every one else in the Central NY area.

The info is as follows:

Ana Zangroniz Photography Exhibition: CUBA 2004
The Red Gallery
29 Second Street,
Troy, New York
(across from the Troy Music Hall)
Dates: Friday March 2 6-9:30pm
Saturday March 3 10am-2pm

Free admission to the gallery. The show is only up for two days. Examples of my work can be found here and here.

Gracias, Val. I'm excited about this opportunity to have the work seen by the public, which is why I'd really like to find more members of the Cuban community. Any assistance you could provide I would truly appreciate.
I'll talk to you soon!

~Ana Z.
freezing in Schenectady

So, iffin you're in NY this coming weekend and want to take in some excellent Cuba photography, please drop by Ana's exhibit and while youre there, please tell Julio que esta perdio.

Here's one of my favorite shots:

Reminiscing about racing

One of the great things about the internet these days is how you can subscribe to feeds from various news sources and blogs and put them in an aggregator so that you can quickly scan headlines, without actually visiting the sites or blogs themselves. Since some bloggers are less prolific than others the aggregator helps to know when one of these infrequent posters has published something.

Every time I see a little (1) next to the feed for Alberto Quiroga's Havana 50-60 blog I feel like a kid in a candy story, because I know when I click on his blog I'm going to be transported to pre-castro Cuba to learn something new through the eyes of a (then) 7 or 8 or 9 year old boy.

Well today a litte (1) appeared next to Alberto's blog in my aggregator and I wasn't dissaponted. Saturday, you see, was the 50th anniversary of the first Cuban Grand Prix and Alberto tells the story of how he viewed it from the balcony of his family's apartment in the famous Focsa building.

It reminded me of the first time I went to see an auto race. My father took me. It wasn't Havana, but instead downtown Miami and it was raining. The famous first Grand Prix of Miami. Though that race doesn't exist anymore it has left a lasting legacy. Miami-Dade county now has its own world-class speedway and hosts important NASCAR and IRL races. All of this of course was started by Ralph Sanchez, who no doubt was as captivated by the fast machines racing down the Malecon as a little boy just like Alberto.

Don't miss this fantastic post and don't forget to add Alberto's blog to your feed aggregator because you don't want to miss any of his well-researched and incredibly well written posts.

An inconvenient truth about Al Gore's movie

raul castro gives it two thumbs up.

de la Cova on Moncada, Coming Soon!

I've been meaning to post this for a couple of weeks now and it keeps slipping my mind. Anyway, good friend and Indiana University Latin American Studies professor, Antonio de la Cova's new book about the July 26th 1953 attack by fidel castro's followers on a Cuban army barracks is coming out at the end of June.

Professor de la Cova has spent 31 years researching the events of that fateful day and the aftermath that we are still living. He interviewed more than 115 people as well. I heard Professor de la Cova speak about the book on local radio and it promises to be quite revealing since it seems there's been a lot of misinformation coming from protagonists on both sides for more than 50 years.

Hopefully, I can have de la Cova on my new internet radio talk show one of these weeks.

A patriot passes

From the Miami Herald:

Mario Chanes de Armas, who fought alongside Fidel Castro in the Cuban revolution only to spend three decades as a political prisoner when he spoke out against communism, died Saturday at Hialeah Hospital. He was 80.

Chanes de Armas had been in a Hialeah nursing home, but became ill Saturday and was taken to the hospital, said his sister, Belen Chanes de Armas.

''For us, he was a very special, special, special man,'' said Belen. ``He died quietly, but was a man who had defended his country.''

Considered one of the founders of the Revolution, Chanes de Armas survived the Moncada attack, trained in Mexico, came over on the yacht Gramma and lived to greet Castro in Havana on Jan. 9, 1959, when the
conquering heroes arrived on top of a U.S. Sherman tank.

Instead of joining the revolutionary government, Chanes de Armas chose to his work in a brewery. Two years later, after watching Castro betray their movement, he spoke out against communists and was tried as a counterrevolutionary.''

On July 17, 1961, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison, longer than any other Cuban political prisoner. It included six years in solitary confinement.

''I watched men get shot, point blank, beaten with bayonets, arbitrarily pulled out and punished. But we were alone. The world didn't know,'' he told the Miami Herald in a 1999 interview.

Thirty years to the date of his imprisonment, he was released and reunited with his four sisters in Miami.

He later traveled to Washington and met with then President Clinton for 20 minutes. Following the meeting, Clinton issued a statement praising Chanes as ``a living testimony to the unbending will to strive for liberty and dignity.''

In addition to Belen Chanes de Lopez, of Miami, he is survived by three other sisters: Mercedes Chanes, of Miami, Aleida Chanes, of Union City, N.J. and ''Mercedita'' Chanes, of Miami.

Services will be held Monday at the Bernardo Garcia Funeral Home, 4100 N.W. 7th Avenue, Miami. Burial will be Tuesday in Hialeah.

Mario Chanes de Armas was imprisoned in Cuba for 30 years, longer than any other known political prisoner anywhere. As Babalu reader Manuel A. Tellechea wrote of him in a comment from another post, "He could have taken his place in Castro's entourage and lived the charmed life of a henchman, as so many did. But he refused. His example obliterates the excuses of all who did. "

May he rest in peace, que en paz descanse.

Posted below, Chanes' essay from the Miami Herald's ``Hemispheric Dialogue,'' an occasional series in which heads of state and other principal figures in the hemisphere discuss issues from their own perspective.

From: Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service | Date: August 6, 1993

KRT FORUM

By Mario Chanes de Armas

I barely remember youth and tranquillity. A brief part of my adolescence was spent in the waning years of Cuba's last democratic government, on the eve of general elections that never took place because the coup d'tat of March 10, 1952, abruptly interrupted the electoral process. The nation then fell under a dictatorial regime that soon became tyranny.
I belonged to a generation of young people who rebelled against the usurpers of power. We had no alternative but to confront dictatorship head on, to act to give back to our nation the freedom and the democratic institutions that Gen. Fulgencio Batista's coup had abrogated.
Getting acquainted and getting together were not difficult. Young people with patriotic sensibilities recognize each other by a simple exchange of opinions. I found my colleagues in the work place, the school room, the trades hall. Soon we formed a nucleus of people cognizant of what we condemned and what we fought for.
Standing out from all the rest, a young lawyer, Fidel Castro, was the man who most clearly expressed our ideas and harmonized our differing opinions.
Against the frustration and impotence that shrouded Cuba's society, we brought confidence and a fighting spirit. We founded a modest but effective publication, The Accuser, which we distributed secretly among the population.
I don't want to rewrite a novel that has more than enough protagonists and that I've lived intensely until today. If I left my youth behind the bars of a political prison constructed by my own companions; if I endured imprisonment under two political tyrannies; if I never accepted the birth of an authoritarian regime that, far from installing the righteous government we had fought for, hastened to bar the return of our institutions and freedoms from the very moment it seized power; if I did all this, it's not because I'm an exceptional man.
That, I am not. I consider myself the simplest of persons. I did it because some of us react viscerally to the betrayal of principles that are a revolutionary movement's reason for existence. We had not struggled merely to exacerbate a class struggle that only led to hatred. We were not deposing a dictatorship merely to impose our ideas.
When Castro's campaign against the independent media began, I believed that our government was entitled to express its opinion, but only if it respected others' opinions. I even favored a mass media that would eventually attack us, because that would force us to re-examine closely our own behavior.
I won't deny that I sometimes felt frustrated as I watched some of my colleagues justify their anti-democratic, unfair actions against journalists and opinion publications. They assured me that by annihilating our enemies' viewpoints, we could create a revolutionary system of laws that would benefit the country as a whole, not just a privileged segment of our society.
I opposed that fallacy vigorously. But they always came back with the bromide that ``the end justifies the means'' ... as if the means weren't part and parcel of the end.
In 1959, when I left prison, where I had been sent for taking part in the Granma landing and for my overall revolutionary activities, Fidel Castro was the supreme authority. His incendiary, nine-hour speeches had a vehement irrationality I wouldn't have expected from my former comrade-in-arms. The democratic nature of our discussions, which led to the raid on the Moncada barracks, was gone from his new harangues.
The young man who chose the 26th of July to break into the military fortress at Santiago de Cuba and seize the weapons we placed in the hands of the people now addressed an abstract, invisible audience. He was only waiting for the masses' applause and support to activate a machinery of vengeance and terror.
Discontent spread through the revolutionary rank-and-file as the Popular Socialist (Communist) Party expanded its participation in government. The party, which had publicly condemned our objectives and our methods, and which had refused to participate in our acts of insurrection, became, at Fidel Castro's behest, his sole and trusted ally.
For a while, anyway. At the end, its leaders suffered the same fate of all those whom Castro utilized while pursuing his monomaniac political agenda. Swiftly, the old communists who edged out our colleagues became themselves a thing of the past: members of ``the first Marxist party of Cuba,'' a rhetorical entity. The ``true'' Marxist-Leninist party would be his creation alone.
It would be naive to think that Castro considered himself a genuine disciple of that ideology. His true leanings go back to the saber-wielders and military strongmen who once stomped through Latin American history and who called themselves ``revolutionaries,'' as if that word were the highest badge of honor.
Fidel Castro is the last vestige of that ilk. Fortunately, his kind is marked for extinction. Look closely at his methods for the past years, and you will find that, behind the young man who professed to love democracy and the law, there lurked an unscrupulous creature who abjures public freedoms and believes only in autocracy. He recognizes only unconditionality and obedience.
That was the character who sentenced me to 30 years in prison. None of the subversive plots attributed to me are true. I was punished for my convictions. Into his hands fell reports on my opinions, my criticism, my disagreements. For 30 years I was a ``special case,'' which over there means one of Castro's prisoners.
Even after I finished my sentence and was released, I remained his prisoner. The efforts of my sisters and friends to gain me permission to travel abroad were in vain. A plea by Costa Rica, which my relatives thought would surely succeed, met with the same reply: ``You're a special case, and we're not authorized to let you out.''
However, the two years I lived in Havana brought me closer to the tragic reality of today's Cuba, to the oppression, misery, and desperation visited on our people. No one could imagine it. And, to me, that experience will be unforgettable.
I witnessed the enthusiastic birth of the revolution and am witnessing the tragic throes of its demise. The only thing left for Castroism is a blood bath.
Now, in a desperate effort to survive, Castro turns to his old adversaries, most of whom live in Miami, and to the international corporations he so often reviled, to save his regime from ignominy and to help him cling to power.
Little does he care that the millions of dollars some exiles may bring in are insufficient to solve Cuba's grave problems. He needs whatever he can get to prop up the privileges of the ruling circle and to turn hard currency into a temporary palliative while he increases police repression throughout the country.
Politically, economically and morally, Castro's regime is doomed. The day all democratic nations, particularly the nations of our hemisphere, of our Latin America, unite and demand that Castro honor those human rights he so insanely ignores, Castro will no longer be able to impose his reign of terror on the people of Cuba.
I am convinced that Cuba's freedom is near. Life has not ended for my country, as it has not ended for me, a man who knows terror, hope, and faith.

Back by popular demand...

Embargo talk.

Since a bunch castro apologist wankers are going to enage in a coffee klatch circle jerk about lowering the embargo later today I thought I'd post some excerpts from this excellent essay by Mark Falcoff who is a resident scholar emeritus of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy research. It was written 7 years ago but most of the points are as true today as they were then. The big differences are the emergence of Venzuela as Cuba's benefactor and the legalization of US agrucultural sales to Cuba.

People tend to forget that economic sanctions are an invention of liberal statesmanship, a kind of peaceful alternative to the massive death and destruction caused by armed conflict. If trade embargoes are inhumane, the practice of bombing cities is infinitely more so.

Nonetheless, if embargoes are to be regarded as morally reprehensible, then it is difficult to see what instruments of persuasion are left in Western foreign policy except to deal with undemocratic and sometimes genocidal regimes on their own terms and hope to influence them through positive economic incentives. This is now the argument of those in the U.S. business community who wish to resume operations in Cuba. So far, however, economic engagement by other countries there--notably Spain, Canada, and Mexico--has yielded up no such influence.

...in the circumstances of today, it is highly unlikely that the United States would impose a trade embargo on Cuba. But since it is already in place, the United States needs an excuse to lift it, namely, that the political situation on the island has taken cognizance of the post cold war order. This means a release of all political prisoners; freedom of the press; an end to the harassment of dissidents, labor leaders, and professionals; freedom of assembly, and some movement toward normal and open political life. Until and unless some Cuban authority can provide that excuse, no U.S. administration will be willing to expend the political capital necessary to change current policy.

...the embargo is perhaps the only instrument left to the United States to influence events in Cuba in a positive direction. Concretely, to the extent that Castro cannot replace the Soviet subsidy, he is forced to devolve economic power to individual Cubans. This has already happened to some degree, starting with the legalization of the holding of dollars and continuing through the creation of several hundred categories of self-employment. Unfortunately, because as yet no Cuban can employ another Cuban except in family-run home restaurants (paladares), the infant private sector is severely limited in its extent and impact, both in economic and sociological terms. Were Castro to take this next, crucial step, he would, in effect, be willing the rebirth of Cuban civil society and, with it, the germs of a pluralistic political order.

Note here that in fact castro was able to replace the Soviet subsidy with a Venezuelan subsidy. As a result almost all of the minimal economic freedoms that were permitted during Cuba's "special period" were repealed.

Because Castro and his associates, good Marxists all, understand this point well, they have been reluctant to authorize further steps toward economic reform. For them, power, rather than the prosperity or well-being of the ordinary Cuban, is the ultimate objective. Reports persist that a fierce battle is being waged within Castro's entourage between "reformers" and "hard-liners," with the latter conceding ground to the former only under extreme duress. Those same reports affirm that the recent infusion of dollars from foreign tourism and investment has weakened the hand of advocates of further reform.

Mr. Falcoff was prescient here. Far from spurring further reforms the cash infusion from tourism and Venezuelan petrodollars has given the regime less incentive to change.

Thus, in Cuba at least, "constructive engagement," far from persuading the regime to liberalize, has given it a new lease on life. A lifting of the U.S. embargo could well consolidate the victory of hard-liners. It would also create a new business lobby in the United States, such as already exists in Canada, Spain, and Mexico, whose purpose would be to deny (or defend) the Castro regime's violations of human and labor rights.

Cuban business lobby in the U.S.: Check! Since cash sales of food and medicine were made legal several years ago (after this particular article was written) castro has done deals with as many different U.S. states as possible, often buying the same types of products from different states to create agents of influence in those states. Thus the cast of characters that never lets an opportunity to trash the embargo pass. And you don't have to go too far to find those who would deny or defend the castro regime's abuses. They troll the comments section of this blog constantly.

...thanks to existing programs that subsidize the export of American agricultural products, any country, regardless of its creditworthiness or lack of it, can run up an enormous debt at the expense of the American taxpayer. The best way to deal with this problem is to lift the embargo on food sales but render Cuba ineligible for such export credits until it satisfies certain minimal conditions of political liberalization.

Here's the real story as I've been reporting for years. When this article was written the US was not selling agricultural products to Cuba. That restriction was lifted for humanitarian purposes but only on the condition that transactions would be conducted on a cash-up-front basis. This was done for the very reason the Falcoff suggests, namely to prevent US taxpayers from getting soaked in another ridiculous farm subsidy that instead of helping the Cuban people, actually helps the castro regime. It bears repeating that castro's Cuba is one of the worst debtors in the world, often not even recognizing its debts. You don't have to be genius to see what happens if normal trade relations are established with the regime. Falcoff's predictions come true and you and I end up financing fidel castro.

Is this the beginning of the rehabilatation of St. fidel?

Read this and get ready to hurl.

Un. Effing. Believable.

Ironbeer history

The things you find on Ebay. Maybe it comes with having reached a certain age, but for whatever reason, I love browsing Ebay for items ayer. I came aross this pre-1950 photo of Manolo Rabanal, founder of Ironbeer, taken at a banquet given in his honor. Does anyone know which one of these dapperly dressed gentlemen is Sr. Rabanal?

February 24th - Yet another sad anniversary

Today marks 11th anniversary of the downing of the two Brothers to the Rescue planes over international waters, where three US Citizens and one US Resident were murdered, and where still no justice has been served.

At La Ventanita you can read about why February 24th is such a bittersweet day for Cubans, as well as listen to the horrendous recording of the Cubans as they celebrated downing the planes, and read some of last year's posts that reflected our feelings on this issue.

Please remember the families they left behind in your prayers today.

Paxety remembers as well.

Faustian Bargain - UPDATED

From the The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy:

(FOW-stee-uhn) Faust, in the legend, traded his soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge. To “strike a Faustian bargain” is to be willing to sacrifice anything to satisfy a limitless desire for knowledge or power.

I have always claimed that the international media that has reporters officially stationed in Cuba have made a Faustian Bargain. The have made a deal with the devil, trading their journalistic souls for the opportunity to be in Cuba.

I never understood why the decision makers at places like the Associated Press, Reuters, CNN would allow Cuba to set the kind of conditions that it does when they would loudly denounce any other country in the world that tried the same thing.

The recent expulsion from Cuba of foreign journalists that have been deemed as "too negative" by the Castro regime is OBVIOUS proof that that quid pro quo exists between the international press and the Cuban government. Presumably any journalists that haven't been asked to leave have not been judged to be "too negative." On that grounds any report they file should be suspect.

Imagine if the White House decided to expel a foreign journalist because he was "too negative." What would happen? A justified international outrage would follow, that's what. But again outside of us interested Cuba observers this will probably create not even a ripple of reaction. That's because of the paternalistic and racist attitude I alluded to earlier this week. It's OK to accept for Cubans what we would never accept in the democratic west.

Why would any self respecting journalist or journalistic organization accept conditions under which it is essentially censored? What is the big story that they are so afraid to miss that they are willing to exchange their credibility to cover it? It's often been speculated that the big story is the death of fidel castro. But honestly what's the big deal? We all know what's going to happen when that day comes. The regime will mobilize the army, step up the repression, and put on a huge kabuki theater production of a state funeral. Are these supposedly unbiased media outlets really just vying for a preferred camera position at a funeral?

I can't believe that these resourceful journalists, the kind of people that broke the watergate story, can't come up with creative ways to report about Cuba without having credentialed reporters there operating under strict guidelines set forth by the regime.

The Miami New Times, a free, alternative weekly newspaper in Miami, found a way. They had an undercover journalist in Cuba reporting the TRUTH about the situation there. That reporter did more good reporting about in a couple of weeks than CNN has done in the ten years it has has had a bureau there.

It's time to put pressure on these journalistic organizations to start reporting the truth about Cuba regardless of the consequences. It's time to shame them into doing what should have been doing since the beginning.

UPDATE: I was just reading an AP report about the journalist expulsions written by Anita Snow, another one who has made a Faustian Bargain, and almost vomited when I read this:

The government — like many around the world — has long used the annual reaccreditation process to review the work of international journalists.

It's true, I'm sure, in some countries. Countries that most people don't think very highly of. Why didn't Ms. Snow mention a few of those "many" countries? This is, again, a way to soften the message. It's like saying "well this practice isn't really that uncommon." Again I want to know which countries she's speaking about. That way I'll know to take any reports coming out of those countries with an even bigger grain of salt than I normally do because by definition the they are self censored.

Simon Simon

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

HEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHE

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

JIJIJIJIJIJIJIJIJIJIJIJIJIJIJIJI

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Will raul castro be first in line?

Apartheid fishing

CubaNet:

"Only foreigners can fish our waters"

HOLGUIN, Cuba – February 15 (Liannis Meriño Aguilera, Jóvenes sin Censura / www.cubanet.org) – Residents of a small fishing village in Holguín province complain that increasingly stern restrictions on their traditonal occupation mean that only foreign tourists can fish their waters.

"Before 1959, most residents of Puerto de Vita fished for a living. Now only foreigners can fish our waters," said human rights activist Vicente Hidalgo, who complained that "severe restrictions directed at fishermen became harsher after the government established a recreational fishing center nearby."

"Recently," he said, "two fishermen were fined 1,500 pesos each because they didn't have the fishing permit which has to be obtained daily from the port authority and which in any case, is very hard to get."

Why are foreign reporters being kicked out of Cuba?

It's really no surprise. It's what dictators do.

After a careful study of their work, the Cuban government realized that the Chicago Tribune's Gary Marx and the other foreign correspondents being expelled, were collaborating with the dictatorship's greatest enemy.

It can't lock them up in the gulag, like more than two dozen home-grown collaborators, so it does the next best thing.

The irony, which I am sure escapes the dicatorship — and its many apologists — is that by trying to hide the truth about its rule by expelling Marx and the others, it only further reveals its true, sorry nature and guarantees its spot in the trash can of history.

Sun-Sentinel - The Spotlight Is On You

Now that the Chicago Tribune's Gary Marx has been ordered to leave Cuba for his "negative" reporting, the Miami Herald's Frances Robles writes that none other than South Florida's very own Sun-Sentinel is the only U.S. newspaper to have a Havana news bureau.

It's safe to say that the news of the Cuban regime's expulsion of Marx puts the spotlight squarely on the last remaining U.S. newspaper with a open presence in Cuba. Everything the Sun-Sentinel's Havana bureau publishes will be looked at with scrutiny, and people will wonder whether they are able to publish it only because they are in cahoots with the Cuban regime and don't want to risk being banished a la Marx.

The MSM will catch on to this and do several exposes on the lack of press freedoms in Cuba. People's eyes will open and they will see the light. They will finally understand what us intransigents have been saying for decades.

Then the alarm went off. 6:30 AM. Time to start a new day.

At least we have our dreams, right?

Today's must read

Our friend Humberto Fontova knows exactly what that chorus calling for an end to embargo cares about, and it's not the welfare of the Cuban people. His brilliant article is a well aimed laser deftly cutting through the misleading rhetoric that’s spread by the MSM, congress, and others who dismiss the exile community; the one group who knows the most about Cuba. It's the best writing on the embargo I've read, and by the way, he also mentions an equally brilliant statistical analysis by Babalu's Henry Gomez. It is today's must read.

Here’s an excerpt:

When it comes to political influence, liberals denounce Cuban-American lobbyists as singularly unscrupulous, diabolically clever, and awash in ill-gotten lucre--unlike those babes-in-the-woods Dwayne Andreas, David Rockefeller and George Soros.

The anti-"embargo" reasoning seems to go something like this: The Carlyle Group, Archer Daniels Midland and The Council on Foreign Relations, along with Congressmen representing the most heavily taxpayer subsidized sector of the U.S. economy, spend most of their waking hours agonizing over the welfare of the Cuban people and yearning to succor them. The Cuban peoples' cousins, sons, daughters, brothers and sisters in Miami, however, want only to starve and torture their relatives. Never mind that these Cuban-Americans risked life, limb and treasure in a mad scramble to rescue their relatives and countrymen during the Mariel boatlift. Never mind that earlier many of them put their lives on the line attempting a wholesale rescue of their countrymen at the Bay of Pigs. Never mind their near-suicidal, armed attacks against Soviet arms in subsequent years, all launched to free their countrymen.

Never mind all that. Cuban-Americans are malicious and pig-headed scoundrels who simply cannot be made to see reason. They hate their relatives and want them starved.

Furthermore, after a couple of junkets to Cuba, executives of the above mentioned Corporations and their crony Congressmen and lobbyists become endowed with an uncanny clairvoyance. This enables them to divine the whims and motives of Cuba's Communist officials much more accurately than those who lived for years under Cuba's communist system, and often within the system. These latter often had daily contact with Cuba's current Communist officials.

Please read The Cuban Embargo at Front Page Magazine

Another Foreign Journalist Silenced in Cuba

First it was Gary Marx of the Chicago Tribune.

Now it's Cesar Gonzalez-Calero of Mexican daily El Universal.

It seems to me that such a perfect society such as fidel castro's Cuba, with the constant claims of victory in the Battle of Ideas, and such a utopian country where the population is always elated and warm and friendly, with free universal healthcare, 100% literacy, low infant mortality rate, magnificent agrarian and agricultural reforms, etc..etc...should have nothing to be ashamed of, much less worried about, and should be beyond reproach.

Ahem.

The Real Cuba has more.

Friday Fast for Cuban Political Prisoners

In solidarity.

Our open-minded journalists

I wrote an email to Miami Herald columnist Ana Menendez alerting her to the post I wrote at Herald Watch about her last column.

She responded with the following:

I don't have time to read blogs, but thanks.

Of course not. Why would she want to read something that might criticize what she writes?

I sent her a pithy response of my own:

That's Ok, I usually don't have time to read the paper. Unless, of course, I find out someone is manipulating statistics to make bogus arguments.

Why distort poverty figures?

A reader left a comment in my last post at Herald Watch that beat me to the punch on a point I wanted to make here. At Herald Watch I'm strictly concerned with issues of journalism not politics. But there is a political component to Ms. Menendez column that I want to address.

Ms. Menendez and a lot of people that think like her (i.e. liberals) love to use class warfare to promote their political agenda. So it's not surprising that she rolled out the old argument that the rich get richer and everyone else gets poorer.

She uses statistical sleight of hand to frame the debate and simply ignores data that doesn't conform to her preconceived notions.

For example she states that:

In the 1970s, the richest 20 percent accounted for 44 percent of the country's total income. By 2002, they accounted for 50 percent, according to census data. In the meantime, the poorest of the poor earned even less of their share.

Assuming that those statistics are correct all it means is that the rich got a bigger slice of the pie. But that doesn't mean that the pie itself didn't grow enough so that everyone ended up with more pie even if their relative share was smaller. She also ignores the disproportionate tax burden that those same people bear, but that's another story.

A quick glance at census bureau statistics show that real median household incomes have risen by 30.9% since 1967. What exactly is real median household income and why is this a good indicator?

Let's start with the word "real". In discussions about income real income gains and losses refer to those gains and losses that account for inflation. In other words if your household income increased by 2% but inflation (or the cost of living) also grew by 2% then you had no increase in real household income.

Another important word in this discussion is "median". For those of you who didn't take statistics, the median is the middle value when you arrange a series of values in numerical order. It's preferable to an average because averages can be skewed by large or small values. Here's an example using a series of 11 values.

1,1,1,3,3,3,8,9,10,10,10

The average value is 5.36

The median value (the middle value) is 3

There is a big difference between 3 and 5.36 (5.36 is 78% larger than 3). If these were household income statistics and we used an average, we might think that overall the people were richer than they truly are. What we would have here is an example of what Ana Menendez is trying to prove. That there is a population of wealthy people and poor people and really nothing in between. So we use the median houshold income to figure out what the people in the middle are making. Of course with more than 100 million households in the US, the data is much more stable than in our little 10-value model. But the point remains the same. You have to look at median not average if you want to eliminate the skewing tendency of extra large or extra small values in a series.

So what this means is that in the last 40 or so years the middle family of all the US families has had an increase in income of 30.9% even after adjusting for inflation. This despite the fact that we have allowed tens of millions of immigrants to enter the country during the same time span. Immigrants that usually bring down the income statistics but also work cheaper keeping the cost of living from exploding. It's all related but the effects of immigration are outside the scope of this discussion.

So if the middle household of all the households is doing better today than 40 years ago this puts a major chink in Ms. Menendez' argument.

But she also refers to poverty as an indicator of the poor getting poorer. But according to the Census bureau the poverty rate was 12.7% in 2004. That's approximately the same rate that it was during most of the 70s and lower than the 15% peaks in the mid 80s and mid 90s, as evidenced in this chart.

Now let's look at Ms. Menendez allegation about the increasing poverty here in south Florida. The census bureau reports that in 2005 the percentage of Miami-Dade county persons living in poverty was 17.8% compared to the US percentage of 13.3%. Obviously Miami-Dade county has a greater rate of poverty than the US. But what has the trend been? The same Census bureau says that in 2000 Miami-Dade's poverty rate for individuals was 18% while it was 12.4% for the US.

So in the 5 years between 2000 and 2005 the poverty rate of Dade county went down slightly while that of the US went up considerably. The gap between Miami-Dade and the US went from 5.6% to 4.5%.

Again you have to consider what immigration does to this equation. As the Herald itself has reported south Florida has absorbed more Cuban immigrants in the last half dozen years than in the entire Mariel boatlift. And this doesn't even take other immigrant groups into account.

It's fair to say that Ana Menendez' hypothesis has a bigger hole in it than the titanic.

So why go through all the trouble to manipulate statistics? Of course it's because of the political agenda people like Ms. Menendez have. They want to create a crisis where none exists to so that government will attempt to implement their proposed solutions. The only thing is that the medicine is often worse than the disease. Which brings us back to the astute reader that beat me to the punch. This is the same bill of goods that Cubans were sold when they were sold the Revolution. Certainly pre-castro Cuba had its troubles, just like south Florida today, but overall things were economically trending in the right direction.

I remember an anecdote that Chris Matthews, the host of cable TV's Hardball, once recounted. He said that if you go to the average American and say "I'm going to give you $500, but I'm going to give him $1000," most Americans will reply by saying "give me my $500." These liberals don't get it through their thick heads that everyone in this country aspires to be rich. That's why these class warfare tactics always blow up in their face. The people that generally buy their line of thinking are limousine liberals themselves. The kind that bought into and financed the Cuban revolution.

Pair charged with violating Cuba travel ban

Criminal charges were filed in Fort Lauderdale federal court today accusing two Florida men of obtaining licenses for religious travel to Cuba on behalf of nonexistent churches and then illegally using the licenses to sell trips to Cuba to about 4,500 people, charging each a $250 fee.

David Margolis of Fort Lauderdale and Victor Vazquez of Winter Garden were charged with conspiracy to violate Cuba-related travel regulations. Vazquez was also charged with making false statements in applications to obtain religious travel licenses to Cuba.

The case is the first criminal prosecution of violations for Cuba travel since the formation in October of a special team of federal and local law enforcement investigators assigned to root out breaches of the 43-year-old trade embargo against Cuba.

Senior federal law enforcement officials today credited the Cuban Sanctions Enforcement Task Force with discovering the alleged scheme attributed to Margolis and Vazquez.

Alex Acosta, the U.S. attorney in Miami, said the special task force and the case unveiled today demonstrate the commitment of the American government to tightly enforce the trade embargo against Cuba as a way to ''hasten'' democracy in the communist island.

If the government really wants to demonstrate a commitment to enforcing the embargo why don't they go after groups like Pastors for Peace, United for Peace and Justice, Global Exchange, and their money launderers.

Read the rest of the story at the Miami Herald.

Cuba Expels US Journalist (Updated)

Kudos to Gary Marx, who stories have been linked here at Babalu, imagine if every journalist based in Havana told the truth instead of parroting the official party line. Imagine.

Chicago - Cuba has told a Chicago Tribune correspondent that his stories were too "negative" and that he can no longer report from the country, the paper said on Thursday.

Correspondent Gary Marx, who has been based in Havana since 2002, was told on Wednesday that his press credentials will not be renewed and that he and his family must leave the country within 90 days, the Tribune said.

"They said I've been here long enough and they felt my work was negative," Marx told the paper. "They did not cite any examples."

A reporter from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, which is owned by the Tribune Company, will continue to staff the media conglomerate's Havana office. Cuban officials told Marx that they would welcome an application from a new Chicago Tribune correspondent.

The story is here.

Update: Riptide weighs in on this as well.

Ana Menendez taking a page from the Herald's playbook

Check out my latest post at Herald Watch (a blog I have admittedly been neglecting lately).